As silly as it sounds (I know I thought it was crazy at first), unlock the wheels to the printer stand and gently roll the printer back and forth to agitate the ink cartridges. Switch sides and repeat. This avoids ruining the seals on the cartridges by repeated removal/insertion.

Direct my cart shaking post toward the person (can't remember who) who recently suggested a schedule of cart removal and agitation that was simply out of control. Anyone in that much of a panic over their inks settling, I hope this settles your soul. Obviously it's smart to agitate, but there is no need to jeopardize your machine over it. Remarkable stuff this ink is.

Next discovery revealed - we know what the honeycombs are for. In fact we know what all the pretty cut-out shapes that surround the flexing chamber wall sections of the piezo board are. It's called "mechanical adhesion". Any time you want to glue one thing to another it's best to prep one or both objects by roughing up their surface - to give the glue something to grab onto. Four minutes after it hit me straight in the forehead again, I took one of the removed printhead faces, flipped it over and examined it's underside. Yep. There are traces of clear glue residue all over the underside of the printhead's tin roof, and it's all in the many funky shapes of the piezoboard's honeycomb surface. Turns out these honeycomb shapes play a critical role in keeping the different inks in our channels from coming together inside the piezoboards.

All these discoveries are great. Learned a lot today. But still not what really matters...

So anyone paranoid about their inks separating and settling in the carts, or their lines, or their dampers, like the muck you need to shake from the bottom of an Odwalla protein drink, I think it's safe to say rest easy. I don't know what Epson makes this ink out of, but that's impressive.

ActuallyI am the culprit who is paranoid about agitation......guilty my Lord....

Bear with me please for going back over old ground but as we all know,the basic makup of ink is just 3 thingsPigment......to paint withResin......to stick your paint on to something like paperEmulsifier....to make the pigment and resin cooperate as they would normally like to go their separate ways...

And water of course is there in abundance too...NO AIR IS DESIREABLE UNTIL THE INK LEAVES THE NOZZLE..a printer in theory should behave no differently to an ink cartridge....

Agitation is the way that the emulsifier gets to bring the pigment and resin together...But its a subtle problem.....you should not of course expect to see sludge too often....nor would i expect to see anything in the innards of a dissected cartridge (which i have done several times too )simply because one has to agitate the cart to get it opened...Nor would i recommend pulling carts out to agitate...(i have constantly advised against doing this since i joined this thread..)..its so important .....you will wear down air seals and more importantly you stand a good chance of destroying the cartridge chip sensor in the printer which requires a technician to fix unless you are prepared literally to pull the machine apart yourself ... I had to do that twice...All that needs doing is GENTLY AND BRIEFLY rock the printer on its loosened wheels...maybe 1 second gentle touch ...in my case one printer had to be placed on a shelf so i made a simple timber base on wheels..put the printer on this base...simple stuff...Other printer manufacturers have automatic agitation programs built in to the printer and in my humble opinion its for no other reason than to give the emulsifier a chance to keep on top of pigment and resin components drifting apart....my next printer will not be agitated by me...it will have inbuilt agitation ...for sure..Mark and I have focussed on the servicing needs of 800 and 900I have been agitating in a programmed way for 75 days (with the previous 210 days as backup experience )with 5 auto checks at 15 day intervals ...4 of the autos were clear first time ...the bad one required 10 minutes time to clear.....no printing (2 a4s)...just stress testing..i never had that clog free pleasure in the previous 6 years of ownership of that printer....Mark achieved the same result on the 900 by printing 25 prints.....and he knows his printer intimitely...top class management and discipline.......in my case ,a few seconds daily has saved me piles of time and money on cleaning chores..Yes you are thinking that the 800 and 900 are completely different printers ..they cant be compared.....but didnt Epson tell you that the 900 would be smarter and clogs would virtually be consigned to the history books..

BUT BUTI may be wrong...and i need to know that i am wrong....

SO

TO DISPROVE my agitation theories and consequent paranoia ,i will now do a 75 day test with 5 autos AND NO GENTLE PRINTER AGITATION during this test period ....with zero printing of course...the only factors left in the equation this time will be TURN ON every day and epson k3 inks as usual....i should in theory come back with the same auto results (80% Autos clear first time or even 100% clear first time..) that would then indicate that autos without agitation is at least as efficient or more efficient than autos with agitation....Will let you know auto results after each 15 day interval so that the 75 days doesnt feel too long...

Doesn't anyone believe that the Epson design engineers would have thought that one out if it is so necessary to agitate the inks?I think the simple act of turning on the machine, which pressurizes the carts, is enough to agitate the ink in the carts!The ony recommendation from Epson is to use the carts up within 6 months of opening, and that probably has more to do with the carrier slowly evaporating and the pigment thickening,which is probably not a good thing.

Last discovery before work - I took Alan's Glycerol mixed with distilled water and spread out a 6x6 puddle of it on the counter, in the sun. Next to it I spread out a 6x6 puddle of water. Two days later Alan's puddle is still wet. The water's been gone since 30 minutes in. My next experiment will be filling a spray bottle with this solution and spraying over the capping station before putting this 7900 to sleep for a week. I wonder if there will be a difference in clogs..

Doesn't anyone believe that the Epson design engineers would have thought that one out if it is so necessary to agitate the inks?I think the simple act of turning on the machine, which pressurizes the carts, is enough to agitate the ink in the carts!The ony recommendation from Epson is to use the carts up within 6 months of opening, and that probably has more to do with the carrier slowly evaporating and the pigment thickening,which is probably not a good thing.

David

Doubtful. the ink is contained within a collapsible bag within the hard plastic shell. It's the only way that ink can flow. A hard bottle won't work as the sides don't contract and a vacuum would form preventing ink flow. Nothing should evaporate from an unopened cartridge (same reason why soda doesn't evaporate from an unopened container).

Doesn't anyone believe that the Epson design engineers would have thought that one out if it is so necessary to agitate the inks?I think the simple act of turning on the machine, which pressurizes the carts, is enough to agitate the ink in the carts!The ony recommendation from Epson is to use the carts up within 6 months of opening, and that probably has more to do with the carrier slowly evaporating and the pigment thickening,which is probably not a good thing.

David

Keeping the pigment particles in suspension requires delicate formulations of the ink ingredients, the particle encapsulation, its polarity etc. Test involves storing the ink at higher temperatures, centrifuges etc. And yes I have seen yellow inks settle too.

The Epson ink pressure system is very passive on the ink content in the carts. The carts empty from the side of the cart too which does not create much flow in the cart either. HP carts empty at the bottom, the regular membrane pump activity there stirrs the ink at the right spot.

What Epson engineers should have thought about is open for discussionand there will be patents they have to consider.

We haven't MSDS at head for these liquid.All of them are Original.Made in JapanEpson company.

Well I donít know that $150 is outside of my budget, I canít speak for others. Hell a couple of carts of ink are more than that.

I have had no problem dealing with these guys; I have purchased a number of things through them with no problems. Case in point 10 ink dampers for my old Pro 4000 printers showed up at my door this evening, $27, free shipping/Post, it took about 9 days from Beijing China. Most of the stuff I have gotten from them has been free shipping/Post. I suspect the shipping cost of the cleaner is due to the hazardous nature of the materials. I ordered some Paper Cutters, Epson made in Japan, for my 9880 are $21 delivered. Got a USB digital microscope for $35.

This is such a novel idea from our friends in Russia, that I just can't help but pass it along

"According to my experience, come to the following: using COCA COLA fresh with a syringe gazom.Esli Epson shake the liquid gently to and fro on the dried up tsvetu.U HP and Canons easier, the cartridge or head put in a saucer of COCA COLA and wait about 5-10 Flushed minut.Zatem distsilirovkoy purged with compressed air contacts and try a test print to the printer - pohaya, cleaning of service a couple of times and back test.I so the circle goes well until pechat.Na Epson may need more than one day, such a procedure."

By the way, the last reply in the thread seems to indicate a 25% solution of the RED (6022802-00) in DI water.

It ain't that novel (wxcept in print here and there) - I was contemplating a tongue-in-cheek suggestion here quite a few posts back suggesting to try Coca-Cola, but I decided not to, because I didn't know how some folks would react to that - but the serious point of it is that Coca-Cola can dissolve quite a bit of stuff. I remember as a kid being told in school it could also dissolve your stomach lining, but I suspect that was a plant from the dental hygienists association who also warned us it would rot our teeth. So gheez, if it can do all that maybe it CAN dissolve some gummed-up ink, plus who knows what else in those printheads - there's the rub. :-) And if the guys at Epson thought Coke could do it, there'd be a brown bottle available from somewhere somehow.

Has anyone mentioned soaking in, or with RED having adverse affects to the head if exposure was too long?

Mind you the first fluid I tested was Acetone, because I wanted to see what would break first. What broke was the glue holding the channel to the plastic framework of the head, and the glue that holds the channel faces on. I also believe the clear floor of the chamber deck was melted a bit. Valuable test. From what I have heard about RED, what makes it dangerous is it's tendency to do the same thing Acetone did. Just takes longer. How much longer is the unanswered question.

I have traced the breakdown of glue. Typically when you remove the face of the channel, the underlying honeycomb surface of the piezoboard is clean and black in color. But on a chamber that has been subject to aggressive chemicals, the honeycombs are no longer clean or black. Whatever color ink that channel contains, it then mixes with the melting glue and leaves a mucky colored stain across the honeycomb surface. Looks like it spreads like a virus. Or an oil spill. The width of the glued honeycomb area that keeps colors separate is substantial, if such a word even exists in the microscopic world of smallness. So it is of course possible that part of this area could be compromised and the head still may work properly.

I need more dead heads for testing. It would be great to let a channel sit in RED for a few days or so, then do an autopsy on it to find out if the glues do indeed break down from exposure to RED. Then I could test how long this breakdown takes. I could positively confirm this with testing. I have ordered both RED and it's clear sister, last week.

Our problem is simple, we can only reach the ends of our clogs. The body of our clogs are completely isolated from any cleaner we put in the channels. All sides, top and bottom. Our clogs are also isolated from the sucking force of pairs cleanings, and from the movement and firing of power cleanings. Try too hard to fire those clogged chambers and your head goes fatal. It's a conundrum, the likes of which I am about to go Medieval on tonight.

This chemical warfare has me paranoid about dissolving glues, so I am going a different route temporarily - just so we know something else that doesn't work. Chances are highly likely that I am about to supply my own self with another fatal head, in just a few hours.

It's the dilute phosphoric acid in Coke that's the active ingredient (it's also what causes calcium leaching in teeth). Again, it's not clear from a chemical perspective what the mode of action might be in cleaning Epson print heads.

I filled an ultrasonic cleaning tank with distilled water and 20% RED, plus a drop of Dawn for Alan. I drew RED into each channel, then suspended the head via wires from above, so just the face of the head sat in the solution. I was afraid of the head touching the machine in any way, even in a basket designed to hold parts in the machine, so I hung the head from the cabinet handle above. Totally hi-tech. I ran the ultrasonic cleaner for ten minutes. It's not an aggressive machine. I had already tested a few open channels in this machine and no damage done. As I watched the head being vibrated you could see fluid movement coming from the tip of the nipples on each color, so there was definitely movement going on inside all of the channels. Once done I drew the clear neutralizer up into each channel. they all behaved the same. I then let the head sit over night, just in case moisture from the ultrasonic process had gotten on the board inside the head. This morning I filled each channel with ink, so as to avoid more and more and more cleanings to charge a head again. It gets expensive all these tests.. Head was reccognized fine. Printed fine. But no change in green.

Eric,How is the printer allowing you to proceed to print with bad nozzles-channels? doesn't it just continue to give you error messages to clean the offending nozzles-channels?Are you doing this in serviceman mode?

That's probably why.I have auto checks and clean on in the default setting (I think), of periodically.If I get a "cleaning recommended" message from the auto nozzle check, the machine will just keep giving me the error and won't print unless I choose to ignore it and choose 'proceed anyway'.I will always clean at that point to prevent the possability of ruined prints ,banding, or possible further damage.I figure the machine is smarter than me , knows there is a problem, and I allow it to fix itself . I really believe that these machines are somewhat self aware and better off allowed to do their own thing even if it wastes a little ink, instead of risking the possibility of fatal clogging;-)